Found Art: Annual Report

Fare thee well 2019  -  A sight for sore eyes!

Dear ones,
How unimaginable the tangles  - and yes, let's hope the citizenry is shaken alive enough !  To traverse this threshold toward 2020 also marks a decade here at The Department of Homeland Inspiration. So thank you for visiting just once, or more often! Art Ranger encourages your participation by keeping an eye out for (art) that often finds us. We pursue this mildly, sometimes out of the corner of our eye while doing life, then express "found art" based narratives, free of needy hashtags.

Holiday Detritus: still up to our eyeballs in it

The Art Ranger could stop what we started nearly by accident, but alas it's become part of our being and transmitting the world. You folks do great moments on Insta, while here at The Department of Homeland Inspiration we perform collection and digestion, amidst venting and hoping; it's where word-craft meets rambling muse, meets ranting:

From the series: Keeping our Eyes Out

We sincerely hope that you will follow our morph into the new decade (audiobook?), and most importantly, that you yourself are able to cultivate s e e i n g even more of what is (there, or here) in your patch of planetary air. To attend to attention.

We can't just turn a BLIND EYE

Almost three years backdropped with the mad puppet of diseased-mind-spin-psycho-cycle. Now all caring spirits and soulfuls must cultivate our forms of resistance, while Truth Chopper, with lumpy excited skin, flails his gas bags in front of the camera fauning a bullshit tickle fan as it Humptys off the wall. We sincerely hope for changes and take actions while trying to not to take our eye off the ball.

Yah - there's more than meets the eye

We never pictured ourselves addicted to dire "news". But in part through our love of literature, we're absolutely hooked!  Just a partial list of names is cataclysmically, sadly enthralling ..... what with the Peckers and Papadapalisses, the Stormys, Manaforts (literally means strong man) and Mad Dogs,  or ...  sprinkle your favorite downfalls here  .....  hear the suck of moral rot  .....  not to mention the Putin/esque escalation of it all,

All Without Batting an Eye!

crashing along while the greasy wheels glide-burn lives into the thick quicksand of unraveling. Our collective intestines ache to hold and repair all the internal and external explosions, not to mention the heated bake of willful planetary desecration.  Paunched launch via hazardous (shitter-twit-fits)! ! ! (Aren't you exhausted by all these daily exclamation marks? ! What would calming punctuation even look like? , hmmmmm

...... b  b  b  b  ...  b r e a t h e  .......  eeee aaaaa tttttt hhhh hh....eeeee..

Pulled the Wool right over their Eyes

And really, too bad they called it that - quid pro quo; it was bound to get so slippery and atmospheric when we really need grip.  All in broad daylight.  But PLEASE  Deus ex machina !

Will he actually get sacked?

Speaking of eyes - last week we enjoyed art writer Peter Schjedahl's poignant reflection, 77 SUNSET ME: "I like to say that contemporary art consists of all art works, five thousand years or five minutes old, that physically exist in the present. We look at them with contemporary eyes, the only kinds of eyes there ever are." 

In the Public Eye

In summary mode, or talking too much, our most recommended book of the past year was The Overstory by Richard Powers which contained many many great sentences including this:  "The air is a mix we must keep making."

Since art is a translation of desire into action, here again is the link for MAD2 Go just in case you missed the performance in which the artist tried to pour her guts out about it. 

Peace and Love,
Be back soon, please send your goodies to: homeland inspiration@gmail.com
The Art Ranger

onward -

Found Art Friday 297

Dear ones,
How can we not clapclapclap for this week's culmination of gavel clacking?  - to those who've been working to untangle the befouled tentacles of this blown-gas-con clown cloud of sadness disguised as hair.  We're (sad for the sweet word (peach) to be sandwiched in there) but glad something resembling a consequence is actually unfolding for the record.

from the series, Re-purposed Artwork : Knickers in a Twist?

de-posed and dispossessed with your tax $$$s in foul mouth

 Switcheroo .....

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b  r  e  a  t  h  e  e e e e a a a a t h h h h  e e e e

And now for some weather related sitings :

such as sidewalk rain painting

Squashed Things:  especially creepy when plastic masquerades as wildlife

the underneaths

 Well - have a great week or moment, and please share your art findings here: homelandinspiration@gmail.com

 

Found Art Friday 295

Dear ones,
Here we are still mucking around The Department of Homeland Inspiration after nearly ten years! Especially favorable to appreciation of color during atmospheric riverweather is to also have items to share from our inbox:

from de Alma of the Oaks noting what was already always there

Bonnie Hotz who makes and sells pots, stops for another Big Sur walker on the trail

Also noticed by the one who makes vessels,  human and insect dwellings juxtaposed

Recently, we went to our old town to the south where friends congregated to celebrate a life well lived.

beautiful friend's beautiful door

And when the party was over, it wasn't really over; we were still dancing in our sleep like whirling dervishes, then this morning/mourning after candle expressed some of the energy of a life poured out vigorously entangled with gravity, some weeping sure, and yet still going and going, transformed into different forms ..... 

Departed one feels smiling abundantly over and under our conversations caused by his existence

Over the past few weeks ( I M P E A C H  WE BESEECH) - even amidst the gag volcanoes of sick idiocracy), Art Ranger is going to say hats off !!! to the note takers who recorded things in order to do their job, a measure of attentiveness, heightened perception, and mere record keeping. Eyes and ears for instance.
Here we share a different kind of note taking -  found another one of dad's travel sketchbooks:

quickly yet caringly, open - so open

when he knows what you like and you know what he's like too

We'll see you soon and thank you for visiting the Department of Homeland Inspiration:  a somewhat weekly blog about discovering the art right where you are.  Dare to share your findings here: homelandinspiration@gmail.com

there ..... there ....

Special Edition

Dear ones,
Where has The Department of Homeland Inspiration been for weeks? Not exactly Home on the Range yet studio and gallery ensconced. If you haven't already seen it, one of Art Ranger's recent artist-activist outcroppings was a live performance called: MAD 2GO
Shortly after the 2018 Supreme Court Hearings, this text began tumbling out of her like a mudflow  accumulating gravity though the passing storms of each passing day.

she got up on a soapbox about it!

Therapy Slippers

If you are in the Monterey/Salinas area, please check out the last week of our exhibition: MyBody MyVoice:
In honor of our month long blog negligence, we will share a bonus rant from years past that has re-populated our kitchen:  The Ants .....
Next week Art Ranger shall continue with our mission at The Department which is to uncover the art that tumbles forth from everyday life - yours for instance, a crack in the sidewalk? share here: homelandinspiration@gmail.com

Found Art Friday 294

Dear Ones,
We admire good posture, and the way that bird leg knees bend in opposite direction to our own to steady a different shape.  Art Ranger experiences this out on her radius of range.

One who Paints Itself is back

Amidst it  - all this external shaking, this locked in a toxic confetti snowglobe - a quake of quackery and theft.

arrives a Menopausal Chicken Sculpture,        

the last (quiet) egg?

we must seek out simple miracles

Some of us must believe

in believing

that someone can still make up their life from scratch

Okay, go for it!

we are sad about what this sculpture really is     and where it may go to not decompose

See how everybody fusses over you now?    ...   and what eyes are really about?

digesting static eccentricity

While all the plastic TV TEETH go clackety clackett y clack

bottoms are falling out, for instance,

Yes, please send to: homelandinspiration@gmail.com items painted by birds, earthen fungi, ... you name it.

Found Art Friday 293

Dear ones,
It is genuinely very nice to find the Art Ranger's inbox (homelandinspiration@gmail.com) with some somethings in it to stoke the nine year old blog campfire: 

spotted by Nicki Sucec in Seattle

We especially admire the map-filled RANGER font.  Hmmmmm ..... we can't help but put on a hat
about that.

And from Mandy of the of The Pastures of Heaven, a colorful devouring: nothing to be wasted in the bent blue dragonfly/active yellow jacket tangle:

@@@

Sometimes Found Art Friday is a collection gathered over time or theme, other times its gleaned from what is experienced on one particular day, such as this one caused by car check-up gifting us a pocket of time to loiter in a different neighborhood.  Much nicer than taking yourself to the doctor.

We humans get our stuff all over everything, and come to think of it, so do birds

  And then there's what ends up next to what:

thrift store flotsam and jetsam  -  Plus some eaves dropping.

In closing, of course, one from the series : repurposed artworks

Slippery Slope a Sliding

Well - our laptop now overheats regularly ..... poof ! ! !

Have a great day (or moment) and please don't hesitate to share your findings here:
homelandinspiration@gmail.com

Fround Art Friday 292

 Dear ones,

It's time isn't it  - to get back in the saddle, or even ride bareback and barefoot, and keep this blog going as an outcropping of The Department of Homeland Inspiration: it's a state of mind that you are invited to share.
Our friend Julie, who is a scholar of the unforseen spirits of sanskrit, poetry, and other accredited topics, noted this conglomeration in Paris, along the Seine. The Seine must indeed be a sieve of civilization :

Somehow, we want to eat a very healthy lunch after seeing this

Now from our own travels back and forth to the Homeland of our origin and inspiration,
Color ado, we collected a series called just clouds, (of course it's never just clouds).  Clouds there were so refreshing to enjoy as they metamorphosed themselves and the landscape, with the phenomenon called rain!!!!!!!!! 

see California seemed so static and achingly dry upon our return:

 Please send us your amazements, worries, or joyful simmering to: homelandinspiration.gmail.com

Found Art Friday 291

And how again,

My vegetable love should grow 

Vaster than empires and more slow;

Dear ones,
Did we tell you we were out on the range? On recess, at large, on call, or in the between?
We do hope your own summer will give rise to images or a sidecar of thoughts to contribute to Homelandinspiration@gmail.com.

Before un tethering from her desk chain, Art Ranger will share the following local moments:

Peaches in the Yard: the color of which make us wish to sing love songs in French

We are happy for the baby who shed this terrible bootie on the trail, very restrictive and headed toward painful shoes of the future; they shall not!

Are you kidding us? Passion Flower?  Talk about "a lot of moving parts"

Once again, and daily, why make art when you can just walk around?

We'll be back!  And thank you for visiting The Department of Homeland Inspiration.

....... As we try to distance ourselves .....

The Mueller Time hangover